Best of 2010: Barbarism with a Human Face

Best of 2010: Barbarism with a Human Face

Best of 2010: Barbarism with a Human Face

A month ago, a book entitled [amazon asin=B004P1J6X2&text=Germany Does Away With Itself] by Thilo Sarrazin – a bank executive who was considered politically close to the Social Democrats – caused an uproar in Germany. Its thesis is that German nationhood is threatened because too many immigrants are allowed to maintain their cultural identity.

Although the book was overwhelmingly condemned, its tremendous impact suggests that it touched a nerve.

Incidents like these have to be seen against the background of a long-term rearrangement of the political space in Western and Eastern Europe. Until recently, most European countries were dominated by two main parties that addressed the majority of the electorate: a right-of-centre party (Christian Democrat, liberal-conservative, people’s) and a left-of-centre party (socialist, social-democratic), with smaller parties (ecologists, communists) addressing a narrower electorate.

Recent electoral results in the West as well as in the east signal the gradual emergence of a different polarity. There is now one predominant centrist party that stands for global capitalism, usually with a liberal cultural agenda (for example, tolerance towards abortion, gay rights, religious and ethnic minorities).

Opposing this party is an increasingly strong anti-immigrant populist party which, on its fringes, is accompanied by overtly racist neo-fascist groups. The best example of this is Poland where, after the disappearance of the ex-communists, the main parties are the “anti-ideological” centrist liberal party of the Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the conservative Christian Law and Justice Party of the Kaczynski brothers.

Similar tendencies are discernible in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Hungary. But how did we get to this point?